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If you want innovation then think about these two words – pain and slack. They can lead you to innovation success. Wherever there is a pain there is a need for innovation. So if you are looking to create new products or services look for the pain points. Study your customers and their everyday activities. Where do they have difficulties ...

I heard this story from creative thinking expert Jurgen Wolff. Steve Loranger, CEO of ITT Industries, shared this technique with Business 2.0: ”If you’re working on an important contract, a ‘must-win’ program, give your team a much shorter deadline than actually exists. Afterward you tell your team, ‘I just got a phone call from the buyer today and he told ...

I was asked not too long ago in an interview what advice I would give to an incoming UK government on how to increase innovation in our economy. Here is what I would recommend: 1. Make it as easy as possible to start a new business. Most radical innovations come from start-ups and we need a lot more of them. ...

Keeping the boss away increases innovation by Paul Sloane Billions of dollars are spent on developing and launching new consumer packaged goods (CPG) products each year, and some companies see tremendous success while others – don’t. Why? One secret appears to lie in the degree of senior management involvement in the creative process, according to a study by The Nielsen ...

Siemens have published a detailed report on Open Innovation. It contains many interesting points including a report from Grant Thornton on the sources of ideas. Their survey revealed that the best sources of ideas were as follows as rated by percentage of respondents: Customers 41% Heads of Business Units 35% Employees 33% Internal R&D 33% CEO 27% Partners & Suppliers ...

Forget What the ‘Experts’ Say by Paul Sloane Experts tend to be notoriously wrong in their assumptions, especially regarding the impact of new technologies. So don’t focus your strategy or innovation efforts on their perception of what the future will – or won’t – look like. In face, the greater the expert, the more wrong they can be, either in ...

This is the third of several ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘What are three specific actions that a non-innovative company can take to become more innovative?’. Here is the next perspective in the series: by Paul Sloane Three things your organization can do to become more innovative: Set goals ...

There is a right way and a wrong way to run a brainstorm or ideation meeting. A little preparation pays dividends. It is very important to separate the two phases of the meeting. The first part of the meeting is idea generation when you use divergent thinking. The second part is idea selection when you use convergent thinking. Here are ...

All action and no thinking is bad; so too is all thinking and no action. The search for perfection can easily lead to procrastination. Because we cannot conceive an ideal solution we keep searching and searching. We use one thinking tool after another and fall into paralysis by analysis. For most situations in life, there is a time for thought ...

Discussions about innovation are often made difficult because people are unclear about the exact meanings of some key terms. In particular there is confusion about the difference between creativity, innovation and invention. Let us start with some definitions: